Forklift damage - take the dent out of your trucks, walls and wallet - part one

Forklift damage - take the dent out of your trucks, wall and wallet - part one

Damage caused by material handling equipment can be costly – putting not only a nasty dent in your trucks but maybe your racking and walls, and definitely a big dent in your wallet.

But how do you go about reducing it? Well the first part is to understand the costs and the causes in your operation.

The first thing you need to do is to understand what your damage costs are.

Damage costs come in many forms; your trucks, battery charging equipment, plus your building including racking, doors, load carriers and walls. Consider the cost of the goods that you move – what is the impact of damage here?

For every £1 your spent repairing damage to your truck you will spend up to £10 repairing these other areas – so the costs can mount up. So start by looking at your out of contract costs and considering these other areas. Try keeping track of these costs for a few months so you know the amount.

The next step is to get to grips with what is causing the damage. Now this may seem simple and many people will automatically look to the driver, but this is not always the case. If it is your drivers look at the reasons; it may be something as simple as needing some extra driver training on the equipment. But it may also be the layout of the warehouse, bottlenecks in the operation, poor lighting, inaccurate use of trucks and poor housekeeping. Something as simple as used shrink-wrap being left on the floor getting caught in wheels can cause hundreds of pounds in damage and downtime.

Put in a process to record the who, where and why for all incidents or if you have a truck management system like Toyota I_Site, you may have the information already at hand.

So once you understand the problem, the next step is to try and work to reduce it.

Keep an eye out for our next blog next week with some great tips to reduce damage, and start looking at the costs and causes of damage in your operation.

If you want help reducing damage in your operation call us direct on 0370 850 1409.